Protective coatings are needed for flexible circuits to protect the circuits from exposure to an external environment. In coating a flexible circuit, portions of the flex circuit must be left exposed for connection to an electronic device, such as a print head assembly. The exposed portions should be accurately positioned to provide protection to the flex circuit, while allowing sufficient access for connection to the electronic device.
In conventional systems, protective coatings with exposed portions for accommodating electronic devices are produced using complicated and expensive coating processes such as thin film lamination, photo imaging lamination and laser cut lamination. Panel form screen printing processes have also been used but these are good for panel processing and will not work for reel to reel type processing. Flex circuits are sensitive to debris, so the coating processes require particular attention to cleanliness
Therefore, a need exists for a system, method and process that can create protective coatings for flex circuits using inexpensive processes.